Monday, May 27, 2013

As Co-Director of the Visual Culture Program, I am always on
the lookout for new materials to add to the library’s visual culture
collections. Ephemera has become a particular focus of my treasure hunting in
the last year. Although online marketplaces certainly provide access to a trove
of promising new additions to our holdings, a good old fashioned fair – of the
paper variety – allows for a more personal experience.

In the last few weeks, The Ephemera Society of America and
Allentown Paper Shows have served as opportunities to obtain a variety of
commercial ephemera, including a circa-1875 advertising envelope for a local
casket maker, a late 19th-century trade card for a Philadelphia burlap bag manufacturer,
and a Victorian-era paper toy dining room set promoting the Cosmo Buttermilk
Soap Co.

From my initial research into these pieces, I have learned a
few interesting tidbits; an inevitability with these engaging materials. George
W. Hanna and his sons, listed as the proprietors of the Philadelphia Burial
Case Co., worked in the funeral trade for fewer than five years before
relocating by 1880 to Kansas to farm. John T. Bailey & Co., a premier twine
and bag manufacturing company, used this trade card to showcase the building to
which their growing sewing department moved in 1880 to meet increased consumer
demands. And Jonas J. Burns, the owner of the Chicago soap company that
marketed the paper toy furniture in the 1890s, turned out to also be a railway
magnate. Small tokens of historical popular culture such as these never cease
to enlighten and delight me—as well as the Library Company’s researchers.

Friday, May 17, 2013

As
noted in a previous post, this year marks the 175th anniversary of the dedication of Pennsylvania
Hall. Constructed as a forum for free discussion of abolitionism and other
reform movements, the building was inaugurated on May 14, 1838. After four days
of dedication ceremonies and conventions of numerous anti-slavery societies,
Pennsylvania Hall was destroyed in a fire by a mob. The amalgamation of the
races combined with the presence of women, as attendees and speakers, were supposed
to have been the primary factors that enraged anti-abolition elements in the
city. Angelina Grimké Weld, Lucretia
Mott, and Maria Weston Chapman were among the women who spoke at the dedication
ceremonies, while Sarah Mapps Douglass was in attendance as treasurer of the Anti-Slavery
Convention of American Women. The Library Company holds several items
that document the peril these women faced and the fortitude they displayed in
continuing to attend the abolitionist meetings. A delegate
to the national convention from the Fall River Female Anti-Slavery Society in
Massachusetts, Laura Lovell recorded her experiences in Report of a Delegate to the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women
(Boston, 1838). Upon arriving, she raved that, “in looking abroad over this
beautiful, quiet city, the first impression is, that I have found on earth a place where order, harmony, love
and freedom prevail.” Sadly, her initial impression of Philadelphia changed
over the course of the week. By the third day, her joy at being surrounded by
like-minded anti-slavery activists was tempered by the growing violence of the
crowd outside as “several stones were thrown through the glass [windows],
evidently aimed towards the speaker.” One female delegate reported walking home
with blood stains on her dress after nearly being knocked over by an injured
black man fleeing from a mob. By the fourth evening, with so much of the
violence directed at African Americans, Lovell and other white female attendees
walked arm in arm with their black comrades in order to protect them from
attack as they departed the Hall “through a mob of two or three thousand,
fierce, vile looking men, and large boys.”

White female abolitionists were also targets of the mob’s
rage. In the Fifth Annual Report of the
Boston Female Anti-slavery Society (Boston, 1838), members described being
“assailed with Stones, Mud, Potatoes,
Onions, and whatever first came to hand.” As they dispersed from a meeting
shortly before the fire, they “bade each other farewell, not knowing that we
should meet again, till we saw each other in the world of spirits.”
Nevertheless, the morning after the conflagration, the ladies persevered by
meeting in a schoolroom in order to complete their convention’s business and to
document their proceedings.

History of
Pennsylvania Hall, Which Was Destroyed by a Mob, on the 17th of May, 1838
(Philadelphia, 1838) recorded the convention speeches and proceedings as well
as reports of the investigation into the fire. Members of the Pennsylvania Hall
Association collected anonymously written placards that urged Philadelphians
“to interfere forcibly if they must”
in order to disperse the convention and protect slaveholders’ rights in their
human property. Despite evidence that the violence was incited by the authors
of these placards, the police were unable to find witnesses to name the
perpetrators and no one was ever convicted for destroying the Hall. The Police
Committee issued a report which largely absolved the city of responsibility,
stating that “this excitement, (heretofore unparalleled in our city,) was
occasioned by the determination of the owners of that building and of their
friends, to persevere in openly promulgating and advocating in it doctrines
repulsive to the moral sense of a large majority of our community.”

From History of
Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia, 1838)

The arson, physical assaults, and lack of convictions demonstrated
that resistance to abolition, as well as women’s participation in the public
sphere, remained strong in many areas of the North.

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The Library Company of Philadelphia

The Library Company of Philadelphia is an independent research library specializing in American history and culture from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Open to the public free of charge, the Library Company houses an extensive collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera, prints, photographs, and works of art. Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, the Library Company is America's oldest cultural institution and served as the Library of Congress from the Revolutionary War to 1800. The Library Company was the largest public library in America until the Civil War.

The mission of the Library Company is to preserve, interpret, make available, and augment the valuable materials in our care. We serve a diverse constituency throughout Philadelphia and internationally, offering comprehensive reader services, an internationally renowned fellowship program, online catalogs, and regular exhibitions and public programs.